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Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3933, 6 August 1881, Page 2

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) -^

Sib,—l think your correspondent/ " Amor Patrise " is rather too hard and bitter aga&ssfc tUaalrish ~Laal"liMgM»t If they are wrong tt*ey ( hare a, great niMtjr - sympathisers, both in England, Scotland, America, and France; therefore there' must be a great many weak minded Protestauls. The Irish never before had such geueral sympathy as they, have this ! time. I do not mean sympathy with j assassination, and the murdering of landlords, and such like; but in their struggle for more liberal land laws, so that they might be able to live by hard industry. Surely the producer ought not to perish first for want, and the idler the last; but as it is, and has been, the poor Irish— " the producer"—have perished first by the thousands, while the idle, fat landlords have been literally squandering away the working men's produce in London and such places, when those that produced all this wealth cannot have enough potatoes to live on. Is there any wonder at horrid crimes being committed ~>t by men who are driven to desperation by starvation? That is not the lime to preach virtue to a man, when he is starving. When men are literally starring, life is not then much valued. I think when men forget their creeds and nationalities, and meet on one common platform to sympathise with the down trodden, that is what all working men ought to be i pleased with, and not fancy we see further ' than anyone else, that it all means Fenianism and the Catholics ruling, with the Pope at the head. This is the sort of bosh we have got tired of, for it only tends to keep alive that popular religion, the religion of hating one another. I -.- say all hail to such liberal minded and large-hearted men as Sir George Grey and Mr Speight, who dare come forward publicly and take the side, of the oppressed. It is so like Sir George to, be on that side. I wish that all working men of .New Zealand would take a lesson from what the poor tenants of Ireland are now suffering, all brought about by bad land laws, and in order to prevent the same thing taking place here, to join the Liberal Association, and help them to get liberal laws passed here. For a time" this ought to be our main business, for it is at the foundation of all prosperity the working class.—lam, &c, J. HOEN,